FROM THE END OF THE FIRST SIEGE OF VIENNA TO THAT OF THE SECOND. 1530 to 1684.
1530 to 1538.
The close of the year 1529 had been made memorable in the annals of Christendom by the retreat of Soliman. He had retired not without loss and a degree of exhaustion which promised an interval at least of repose to the countries he had so cruelly ravaged. He was, however, neither satiated with blood nor discouraged by that signal failure of the main object of his expedition which the Turkish historiographers strove in vain to conceal beneath the flowers of Oriental eloquence. So early as in the spring of 1532, he poured down upon Hungary and Styria a force even more numerous than that which had invested Vienna. Some have computed it at 600,000 men, probably an exaggeration; but Ortelius, a writer generally to be depended upon, speaks of 500,000, and of these 300,000 horsemen. The first serious resistance which this immense accumulation of numerical force had to encounter, was opposed to it by the inconsiderable and scarcely fortified town, Güns. The defence of this place ranks high among the instances in which patience and resolution, arrayed behind very feeble defences, have baffled all the efforts of numbers stimulated by the hope of plunder and a strong sense of the disgrace of failure. Nicholas Jurechich, a Croatian nobleman, was the leader to whom the credit of this defence is due. In the character of ambassador extraordinary from Ferdinand to the Sultan, he had very recently displayed firmness, temper, and sagacity; and now, behind walls which had been mined in thirteen different places, and which presented a practicable breach eightfathoms wide, with a body of troops originally of insignificant numbers and reduced by eleven assaults, he met with unshaken resolution a twelfth desperate attempt of the enemy. It was all but fatal. The troops were nearly driven from the walls, upon which eight Turkish standards were already planted, when a shout of despair raised by the women and unarmed inhabitants of the place was mistaken by the assailants for the cheer of a reinforcement. The garrison profited by a moment of hesitation, and again succeeded in their noble effort. For twenty-five days they had occupied the whole force of the Turkish Empire in a fruitless attempt,—a period fully sufficient to exhaust the patience of the brave and impetuous but ill-disciplined armies of the faithful. The Sultan, unwilling to waste a further portion of the best season and of his best troops before a place so unimportant in itself, adopted his usual expedient in such cases, magnanimity. He invited the commanders under a safe conduct to his presence, complimented them on their conduct, and making them a present of the town and citadel, a donation founded on a right of property on which they had no inclination to raise a verbal dispute, for the utter exhaustion of their resources of all kinds would have rendered further resistance impossible, withdrew his forces; not however, as was expected, in the direction of Neustadt and Vienna. He marched, on the contrary, up the course of the Mur, by roads of the most difficult and harassing description; and, establishing himself in Styria, sat down before Gratz, which, after a tedious siege, he took and ransacked, but failed to reduce the citadel. Some writers are of opinion that this diversion of his force, in fact a circuitous retreat, was the work of the Vizier Ibrahim, who had been bribed by Charles V. Nothing has been discovered in the Austrian archives which contain the state secrets of the time, and no passage has been detected by such inquirers as Von Hammer in the pages of Turkish history to favour this supposition. The bribe also must have been a large one which could have influenced the conduct of a man who had the treasure of the seven towers at his disposal. A far more natural cause may be assigned for the movements of the Sultan. The relative position of the two parties was very different from that of 1529. It is true the frontier provinces were, as then, exposed to the first onset of the invader; but the preparations of the House of Austria for defence were further advanced, better organized, and on a more respectable scale than before.
The Emperor Charles in person had put himself at the head of the troops of the Empire, and had well employed the interval of security which the delay of the Sultan before the town of Güns had afforded him. With an army rated at 260,000 men, of which however only 126,000 were combatants, namely, 96,000 infantry and 30,000 cavalry, he lay encamped at no great distance from Vienna. In his former campaign Soliman had sought in vain for the accursed Ferdinand, and had made much of his disappointment in the bulletins from his camp and in the pages of his servile historiographers. He was probably not equally desirous of falling in with such an antagonist as Charles, at the head of an untouched force of this magnitude. The sudden direction of his army upon provinces bare of troops, but which contained plunder to be gathered, and villages to be burned, and helpless people to be slaughtered, was a safe and a tempting, though inglorious proceeding. These were the motives, as far as inquiry can now detect them, which postponed to a subsequent century the great spectacle of actual collision in the field between the main armies of Turkey and the Empire. Austria meanwhile derived from the postponement of so tremendous an issue no immunity from a repetition of the horrors of the last invasion. While the main Turkish army occupied Styria, the bands of Michael Oglou were again let loose upon her plains, re-enacting, up to the walls of Lintz and Vienna, every former atrocity. If, however, they were allowed for a period thus to extend and pursue their ravages, they came at last within reach, not merely of the partial resistance by which the more adventurous of their parties had before been occasionally cut off, but of the heavy blows of a disciplined enemy. Vienna itself was in a state of defence which fully secured it against any attack from the irregular troops of the Turks; and it is not probable that Soliman at any time had contemplated a renewal of his attempt upon that city with his main army, for he had again left his heavy artillery behind; and all his preparations tended to a pitched battle in the open field. The Pfalzgraf Frederick was able, therefore, with a strong detachment, to address himself to the deliverance of the open countryfrom the marauders, and took up a position at Enzesfeld, which threatened the communications of Michael Oglou with Styria. The latter commenced a hasty retreat in the direction of Neustadt and Pottenstein; but the principal passes of the mountains beyond were already occupied by the Pfalzgraf; and a strong force of arquebuziers under a skilful officer, Sebastian Scheitl, moved upon his rear by Kaumberg. On the 18th of September, his main column, encumbered with plunder and with 4000 prisoners, was suddenly attacked by this detachment, and driven through Pottenstein towards the defiles in front, which were strongly occupied by the Pfalzgraf. The savage leader, thus caught in the toils, kept up his character for courage and cruelty to the last. He directed an instant and indiscriminate massacre of his prisoners, setting the example with his own hand; and, dividing his forces into two bodies, scattered one into the pathless forests to the south, and headed the other and main body in a desperate attempt to cut its way to the front by the valley of Stahremberg. He fell among the foremost. His jewelled helmet, appropriately adorned with vultures’ wings, was conveyed to Ferdinand, and may still be seen in the Ambros Museum at Vienna. On his fall, the command was assumed by his lieutenant, Osman, who struggled through the defiles only to fall in opener ground upon the troops of the Empire commanded by the Count Lodovic and the Margrave Joachim of Brandenburg. Tired horses and despairing riders fell an easy prey, not only to the troops, but to the peasantry. Attacked by the latter in the neighbourhood of Siebenstein, many were forced over a picturesque precipice, which still bears the name of the “Turkish Fall.” Osman himself fell by the hand of Paul Bakics, who bore him from the saddle with his lance, and finished him with his own jewelled dagger, which hung at his saddle-bow. Of this division of the robber force, nearly 18,000 strong, it is said that not one escaped. Those who were detached through the forests had better fortune. Part, at least of them, effected their junction with Soliman in Styria. In Austria the Sackman was seen no more. In Hungary, indeed, and Styria, their excesses continued for some years, but the frontier of Austria proper was henceforth secure. In the battle of Guirgewo against the Poles in 1596, the last remnant of the Akindschis was destroyed, and thename appears no more in the Turkish annals. On the 2nd of October the Emperor Charles V. and his brother Ferdinand descended the river from Lintz, and were formally received at Vienna on the 3rd. A great review was held, at which Charles, to conciliate the Hungarians, appeared in the costume of that country. Soliman, on receiving intelligence of the fate of Michael Oglou, pursued his retreat with so much precipitancy and confusion, that if Charles had followed him with activity, the fate of Hungary must have been decided. The affairs of religion, however, were nearer to the heart of Charles than those of Hungary, and the approaching convocation of the Council of Trent attracting him to Italy, the golden opportunity was lost. Zapolya retained possession of his throne, under the protection of 60,000 Turks encamped on the bank of the Drave. In 1538 the peace of Grosswaradin was concluded, in which Ferdinand recognised the usurper as King of Hungary in the portion of that country occupied by him, and as Wayvode of Transylvania, in return for the reversion of that kingdom on Zapolya’s death, whose son, should he leave one, was to enjoy only the hereditary succession of his house, the Countship of Zips.